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working to conquer OCD
All these different themes are like me living In my worst nightmare, I don’t want any of these thoughts and I accept the uncertainty behind them, but I just want to be back to me. I’m looking for any advice
So, i had a fight over nothing with my mother and now my anxiety got triggered which in turn made my ocd worse. During Summer we are going to go to a wedding and i wanted to get a specific dress to wear but my mom disagreed with my choice and kept on trying to make me buy something else. I told her I don't agree but she kept on saying i know nothing about fashion and that i should listen to her. I didn't and she started getting aggressive which in turn made me angry and i told her that she shouldn't try to force her opinion on others. She kept on yelling that she won't stand others making fun of her daughter (all because of the dress i chose🙂) and i told her i don't care about the opinion of others over what i wear and she replied "okay but don't be next to me when we go".Then she started saying that i'm always the only one that "cancels" her as a person (in her book if you express any different opinion over hers it means you're against her for some reason) and that i should never ever ask her for anything again and that i should stay with my "ignorance". And then she kept on gaslighting and reversing my words. Apparently I'm not allowed to even choose what i want to wear.
I got diagnosed with OCD, when I as 12, but had been deemed "odd" by my mother, since I was a toddler. Through out my childhood, I was anxious about a lot of different things. Before OCD "broke out", I controlled the swing in the garden ever night for 5 minutes, then one night, I felt the need to control the lamp in the dining room and needed to make sure it didn't swing. My Magical Thoughts OCD had been born. Soon it spread from the swing in the garden and that one lamp to everything that was hanging, Contamination OCD made a brief appearance, but for me my Magical Thoughts had been my form of OCD and I had been sure, I was stuck with it for life. When a new intrusive thought popped up in my head, I didn't recognize it for what it was. I thought touching the leg of the 14 year boy, I tutored as a side job, with my leg, while sitting close to each other in order to read the same book, might have aroused me meant something was wrong with me. I felt the need to investigate, to think it trough, rehash and make 100% sure, I had not been aroused by my student. Me having very lively imagination skills came in handy there, unfortunately not for me, but for my OCD. I tried to imagine how a pedophile would feel, when they liked a child. I tried to create the emotional and physical feelings, I think a pedophile would feel, and compare them to how I had felt. I did this to gain certainty, but after months I realized I had trained a new OCD form on to myself. The thoughts would come and I would go through the motions, trying to feel what a pedophile would feel, compare it to how I had felt and then finally, after sometimes hours, be able to ensure myself, that I didn't feel that way. The thoughts became more and more, not only children and teenagers I encountered would trigger me, also seeing them on TV, or thinking of them sent me down the rabbit hole. Pretty quickly it also extended to my cat, then to animals (even insects!). 17 years later POCD rules my life, it is always there, it turned more in to a constant feeling of tension and guilt, like a predator sitting on a wall, waiting to attack. Every sexual arousal needs to be checked, I can only engage in anything sexual, sex, or masturbation, when I can feel sure, it had nothing to do with a thought about a child, or animal. When I don't assure myself properly, check and think, or just try to let it pass and say to myself - Yeah, don't worry - I feel guilty after. What I find weird is, that everything seems to arouse me now. Anything slightly sexual, that years ago wouldn't have aroused me, does now. It's is kind of like having gotten hyper sensitive around the topic sex. And that triggers my POCD even more, as it got hard for me to not be aroused. I also feel like masturbating often, as I feel constant tension in my groinal area, but that runs the risk of OCD getting worse during, or more often after. On the website of NOCD I today read about groinal rousal to POCD thoughts and that any sexual thought can trigger it without one being attracted to children. I felt better after reading it, but that wore off quickly. Like always OCD got it's power back, it feels, that when I get a bit of freedom and piece of mind through therapy, or stepping back and telling me - This is OCD, you are not a monster! - OCD had a go at me to gain its territory back. Only 2020 I found helpful articles about POCD, for years I only searched in my mother tongue and found one article, that didn't describe POCD as good and detailed as the articles on the website of NOCD do and above that, the author (a psychologist or psychiatrist) stated that only men are able to suffer from POCD. I had been crushed, I thought, if only men are able to suffer from it, what am I experiencing then? At the end of 2020, I thought to myself - Why not search in English? - and finding great articles written by psychologist/psychiatrists with such insight, that I thought, the articles must have been written by someone who suffers from POCD, really blew my mind and helped me a lot, till, yes, you guessed correctly, OCD came at me with full force again. Before I read some of the posts in here, I felt pretty much alone with suffering from POCD, that's why reading your posts really made me feel less alone. I would love to meet POCD sufferers and talk to them, if there is a chat option for that on here. Thanks for reading, Zoë
I went almost 24 hours without sleep yesterday and worked a 10 hour shift so when I got home I went to sleep because I was so exhausted and also sad because my mind was driving me crazy I couldn’t even concentrate so I went to sleep and I remember being half asleep last night when my mom came home she was literally screaming at me and I remember screaming back saying that I wasn’t going to talk to her if she was going to speak to me that way and she was being so mean to me last night and I really don’t even want anything to do with her. I’m 23 and can’t afford to move out. I even cleaned the house yesterday for her like she asked me to and she came home literally screaming and yelling at me for no good reason all because I was asleep at 7 or 8 at night because I had gotten no sleep since 7 or 8 the night before. Why would she just scream at me? I don’t understand why she treats me the way she does. Maybe I deserve it? I don’t know
I think I have meta OCD. And I just did my first active erp exposure. Afterwards I doubted if I did it right, if I got the “right amount” of anxiety, if this is going to help me. Does anyone else experience this? I feel like it’s hard to get better with this type of doubt.
How do I know if these thoughts about leaving my partner are real or not? I have been feeling these things for a while, and they are agitated by problems/fears of physical intimacy and desires of my partner to have kids in the future. Is it possible to love someone but want something else? I am tired of feeling this way and it has taken a toll on my mental health. My husband is wonderful but I feel so much cognitive dissonance on the inside, like what if this isnt what I really want, this future? But I cant bear making a decision because I dont want to hurt him. But I am suffering greatly with these feelings. How does one know if these feelings are OCD?
Self harm ⚠️⚠️tw I used to self harm when I was younger however I stopped and recently I’ve been going through a lot and I started cutting myself again on my thigh. I’m usually truthful with my therapist and I have an appointment tomorrow. I hear people going around telling people not to tell them the truth or they will send you to the psych ward so now I’m terrified to be open to my therapist tomorrow
At this point I’m pretty sure I’m psychotic. I have intrusive thoughts all day long of me doing a bunch of things that I never and will never do. Images of me poking out my own eyes in all sorts of other horrific things that will have to do with self mutilation. These images have been haunting me for two years with the persisting fear that I will act out on these things one day despite me never wanting to do so. Now on top of these thoughts I am dealing with something else. I keep thinking about the fact that there’s no escape from life other than death and it makes me feel scared and trapped. I can’t stop thinking about this that there’s no escape. It’s scaring me. I want to live I have no desire to die but once I get the intrusive thought about not being able to escape this life is scaring me. I believe I’m going through depersonalization because nothing feels right my surroundings feel unfamiliar I feel unfamiliar. I feel like an alien in a place that seems unknown to me. This all started after I had a panic attack in the shower three weeks ago over my intrusive harm thoughts and in the moment I actually thought that my life was over and that I was about to act out on it but of course I didn’t because it’s just a thought and an obsessive fear. Something I would never do but it felt so real in that momentI almost passed out from the fear. The day after that I felt like nothing was real and I’m still in depersonalization and having panic attacks on the regular but today I got that thought about not being able to escape life and how we’re basically all trapped here. I can’t stop thinking it and it’s making me feel sick. Maybe if I Felt more connected to myself and my surroundings stuff like this wouldn’t bother me but that panic attack destroyed me. Does this sound like OCD or something else?I was completely normal and fine three weeks ago yes I had my intrusive thoughts but they weren’t scaring me or controlling me like they are now.
Has anyone had success recovering from existential ocd? I’m so sick of the constant thoughts and anxiety around death and non existence. I’m doing ERP but I’m finding it challenging to find good exposures. Just looking for some hope that it’s possible to get better to keep me going. Also and tips on exposures would be appreciated!
Does anyone experience some kind of a persistent mental block while trying to do important college work? I've been trying to write my final paper (english is not my native language, I don't know how you call that) which is 100+ pages long, true, but it isn't anything too complex. I've been trying to do it for the past two years at this point and while I'm prone to procrastination I could not count how times I tried, with limited success. The one thing I know for sure is that my ocd goes crazy after the first 5-10 minutes. Has anyone found a way to work through such symptoms? It's extremely frustrating, especially when I know that this stuff is well within my capacity to get done in 2 weeks, not 2 years.
Sorry for long text.I've been struggling with false memories since a month ago and I suspect it is coming with depression due to my severe rumination. I'm in a 7 month relationship and I'm deeply in love. Nowadays I'm struggling with myself and my relationship because I thought I might have cheated. I thought I might have kissed a friend last Friday while we were talking. Yes exactly while I was talking to that friend that situation entered into my head and I couldn't figure out between is real or not. 5 days have passed, there's no evidence about that and I don't have any flashbacks. I try to go back to that moment, at the beginning I didn't at all but now I do every day and there's nothing. I don't remember a kiss and his reaction and my feelings during that action. But the thought and feeling I could have cheated are persistent. At the beginning (first days, friday and Saturday) I was really afraid of my boyfriend and I couldn't talk to him. There were moments were I was able to rise and say "I don't remember that kiss so nothing happened" but now I can't rise anymore even if I don't remember nothing. When I rised then I thought or felt that I don't remember but maybe my friend does remember everything. He haven't told me anything about that, like nothing happened. I use to think that he knows and his friends and it could be a fact I don't want to remember so I blocked my memory to not believe it. First because I don't like that friend and second because would hate being a cheater and hurting the person I love. Monday I reunited with my bf and I stayed at his home. My anxiety levels where high. Whenever I kissed him, hugged him, or touched him I thought "you're making a fool of him" "how dare tou" "if he just knows" "did you really do it?" "I need a straight answer" "what if everything ends" "what if you don't want to admit it and don't want to make charge of it" "don't pretend nothing happened" "you have to remember the truth" I don't know if these are genuine thoughts or OCD thoughts. I don't even know if this is OCD anymore but since the beginning, since I started to think about this cheating thing I felt its presence, I related it to be possibly OCD. What makes me ruminate is maybe I use OCD as an excuse and every mistake I make I'll believe on purpose it is OCD talking. As I said I can't differentiate between myself or OCD. I don't know if this is an ocd case or reality. I don't know what is my next step, discovering it is true, asking my friend to confirm and confessing this to my boyfriend or discovering it is OCD, work hard to stop ruminating and keep moving on. I don't know which path choose. I don't have just thoughts but feelings. A deep feeling I did something bad, a constant heartache.
I really love my partner he is so understanding and patient when it comes to my intrusive thoughts about him cheating on me but it's so hard to fight these insecurities, I have forgotten to live my own life because my life is based on his and I completely forgot myself. I think I am ready to ask my psychiatrist for some medical help because I need to love myself. Now I just hate it so much
Was doing fairly well for a while. Saw a video on HOCD vs denial and i told myself dont watch it just move on and i watched it anyway and it said pushing thoughts away and not trying to think about things is denial and now i feel like im back at step 1 again. And it feels real and i hate this. Im stuck and i just want to love women again and enjoy my girlfriend
I have an irrational fear that my boyfriend (who makes me really comfortable and never pressurizes me) would ask me for explicit pictures and would leave me if I refuse. How do I sit with this? I don't want to leave him at any cost.
Guys i was fine for a second, and then i wanted to rewatch one of the Chinese dramas and i started constantly looking at how long the episode is left without watching it peacefully . how do i stop this???? at work also i started getting anxiety of doing stuff wrong and getting fired.
Hi today I started ERP on my own I have hocd and I did an exposure when I went to a lesbian forum and wrote a comment to a girl but now I’m convinced I’m actually a lesbian… and It feels wrong to be with my partner. Did I do it wrong ? Cause it looks like I just made it worse or is it bc I didn’t do any compulsion that I’m feeling this way ( at least I think so) ?
I am really struggling with my ROCD right now, and can’t seem to think about anything else when I have any second of downtime. What do you do to refocus? Additionally, I feel like this person who I’ve been talking to isn’t trustworthy, but I can’t tell if it’s my ROCD or actually my own perception. I go back and forth. Sometimes he is, sometimes he isn’t. We’ve been using Snapchat to talk, and I go back and occasionally delete pictures I’ve sent because I am afraid that I’m being used… although I know he enjoys my company and genuinely likes to talk to me. We’ve never met in person and we started all by talking… is it reasonable to be more interested in physical things because we’ve talked over text/phone for so long? (It’s been on and off for a year) we aren’t together by my brain keeps going back and forth freaking out about if this is a relationship… and I don’t know if I’m ready or not but I can’t tell if that’s ALSO ROCD or just me… Help? Thoughts? Experiences?
Im in a really difficult place. I have had ROCD symptoms ever since dating my now husband. My doubts began to be about my love for him, is he the one, etc. When we got engaged and before that I was also filled with questions about what do I want with my life and fears of getting married keeping me from fulfilling/exploring my dreams. Fast forward and we have been married for 2 years. I still had those doubts but developed a fear of sex (had sex related ocd themes as a teenager) and this has made intimacy hard and put a strain on our relationship. We have been doing couples therapy for intimacy but it hasnt really helped. I am thinking I need ERP help, because even without physical intimacy, I am still filled with fears related to sex that I obsess over. The strain of all this and my intrusive thoughts have also led me to contemplate divorce. These intrusive thoughts have left me feeling depressed, loss of appetite, unable to sleep. Recently my husband expressed sadness about our lack of intimacy and my doubts about wanting to have kids (his big dream). It triggered even more anxiety and I kept thinking, should we just end this now? I have no energy to plan for kids and one of my obsessions is "do I really want kids? What if I dont?" I didnt dare say that though, I dont want to hurt him and I do love him, he is what I would want in a life partner. But I am struggling so much with my anxiety that its making it hard for me to function. How do I handle all of this when it feels so real and when there seem to be actual reasons for giving up on our relationship (fear of engaging in sex, not sure if I want kids). I would love to have the type of carefree life I see other couples have but I cant deal with all this. I feel stuck, dont want to do something I regret. My worst fear is hurting him. I have struggled to see all this as OCD since it overlaps with life things that feel so real. Wouldnt it make sense to call it quits if sex is problematic? But my thinking is obsessive and I have a history of OCD. Why do I keep feeling like giving up on us and how do I turn this around? Its hard.
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OCD doesn't have to
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